ABSTRACT
Introduction From 2008 onwards, a rapidly unfolding economic recession with global dimensions has been provoking popular protest and unrest in many parts of the urban world. Arising from apparently different claims, that sometimes seem to be very local in nature, these protests appear to be desperately seeking to bring back to the political agenda the unsustainability and destructiveness of neoliberal forms of economic – including urban – growth, and of urbanisation as well. Cities across Europe, including London, Stockholm, Paris, and Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Athens, Istanbul and Kiev, have erupted in massive demonstrations, strikes and protests, often accompanied by violence (Brenner, Marcuse, & Mayer, 2009: p. 176). These movements were soon joined by the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement in New York City’s Zuccotti Park (September 2011), which was quickly followed by a wave of occupations in cities throughout the US and the world (Juris & Maple, 2012). Studying the chronology and the geography of the spread of these protests, which have mainly taken the form of collective sit-ins in public urban spaces – in particular, piazzas and parks – sheds light on the catalytic role played by the ‘blow-up’ in the Arab world some months earlier (December 2010). Protests spread indeed from North Africa to Southern Europe, then to the rest of Europe, the US, and the rest of the world. This, then, means that, despite the local micro-reasons which fuel people’s expression of discontent, there should also be some global reasons that lead local reaction and protest. Nonetheless, protests worldwide were overwhelmingly urban, thus bringing to the fore the injurious effects (and side effects) of contemporary urban growth for humans and the environment. According to Harvey (2012), the current socio-economic crisis is an urbanisation crisis, growing out of speculative investments relating to the built environment and to the massive redistribution of real income that is embedded in the operations of the capitalist city. This might help to explain why, for example, many middle-sized towns in Spain, Italy, or Portugal doubled the proportion of built land but not their population in less than a decade.
